The Thief of Bagdad by Abdullah Achmed

Description

A thief's life changes when he sees the Princess of Bagdad, stealing his heart instead of treasure. This classic 1924 fantasy novel, based on the Douglas Fairbanks film, was penned by the prolific pulp writer and screenwriter Achmed Abdullah.

First published in 1924, The Thief of Bagdad has been reprinted only once in the past years! The story begins when Achmed, the most skillful thief in the city-state of Bagdad, steals into the Palace of the Caliph in search of loot; but one look at the city's Princess, and he discovers a greater treasure, for it is the Princess who becomes the thief, stealing his heart instead.

Achmed Abdullah's classic fantasy novel, based on the silent film of the same title, starring Douglas Fairbanks. Achmed Abdullah, a pseudonym of Alexander Nicholayevitch Romanoff, was born of a Russian Orthodox father and a Muslim mother. He was raised in Britain and educated at Eton and Oxford. He served in the British Army in France, China and India. He is most noted for his pulp stories of crime, mystery and adventure. He wrote screenplays for some successful films. He was the author of the progressive Siamese drama Chang, an Academy Award nominated film made in 1927. He earned an Academy Award nomination for collaborating on the screenplay to the 1935 film The Lives of a Bengal Lancer.

Excerpt

In the Orient's motley, twisted annals the tale of Ahmed el-Bagdadi's — "the Thief of Bagdad," as he is called in the ancient records — search for happiness, which is by the same token the tale of his adventures and exploits and love, has assumed in the course of time the character of something homeric, something epic and fabulous, something close-woven to the golden loom of the desert in both pattern and sweep of romance.

It is mentioned with pride by his own tribe, the Benni Hussaynieh, a raucous-tongued, hard-riding breed of Bedawins, brittle of honor and greedy of gain, of whom — due to a father, tired of the sterile Arabian sands and eager for the pleasures of bazar and marketplace — he was the city-bred descendant.